Florida Courier - January 01, 2016

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At the top of their game in 2015 See Page B1

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2015

www.flcourier.com

JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 8, 2016

VOLUME 24 NO. 1

OUR TOP 10 STORIES The Florida Courier staff chose the top 10 of the hundreds of stories our newspaper staff reviewed, covered or wrote during 2015. Factors considered include newsworthiness, relevance, uniqueness, familiarity of the issue, the intensity of statewide interest, emotional impact, and whether there is a uniquely ‘Black’ perspective.

1

Black youth activism – After last year’s killings of Mike Brown and Eric Garner and this year’s in-custody deaths of Sandra Bland and Freddie Gray, the loosely organized group known as Black Lives Matter effectively used social media, particularly “Black Twitter,” to raise the consciousness of young people around the country and indeed around the world. The result was street demonstrations, economic direct action against local merchants, and other protests in cities large and small.

Young activists are taking a much more aggressive approach toward achieving racial justice than has the traditional civil rights movement, and have been criticized in some quarters for political naïveté and disorganization. Still, the movement and the grassroots protests – some which target big-money interests, such as the University of Missouri football team’s threat not to play in televised college football games if the school’s president, perceived as being racially insensitive, did not resign – may mark a generational turning point in modern American civil rights activism.

2

Gun violence – In Charleston, S.C., a young White supremacist killed nine Black churchgoers in a historically Black church during Bible study. In Daytona Beach, two Bethune-Cookman University students were shot dead and one seriously injured as a consequence of a dispute about past-due rent. (The killer subsequently committed suicide in a Miami-Dade jail cell.) Black youth, particularly young Black males living in slum and blighted communities with bad schools, low employment and high gang activity, continue to kill innocent bystanders and each other around the nation – with no end in sight.

3

“Negroes With Guns” series – In response to police killings and the Charleston massacre, the Florida Courier published a multi-part series of front-page articles entitled, “Negroes With Guns.” The series reviewed the complex E. JASON WAMBSGANS/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS and sometimes contradictory relationship that Black Americans have had with gun People participate in what organizers called a “Black Christmas” protest on See 2015, Page A2

Christmas Eve in downtown Chicago.

FLORIDA COURIER / OUT AND ABOUT

‘Homecoming’ for UM alumni in the NFL

Kids or adults?

Lawmakers consider legal options

BY MARGIE MENZEL THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – Bills are moving in the House and Senate that would limit the ability of Florida prosecutors to charge juvenile offenders as adults, a legal practice known as “direct file.”

Each measure has passed one committee, and they could be on a collision course – turning on the question of how much discretion prosecutors should have in such cases.

Opponents of direct file point to a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch that found Florida transfers more juveniles to adult courts than any other state. The report also found that between 2009 and 2014, more than 60 percent of the roughly 12,000 juveniles who were transferred to Florida’s adult courts had been charged with non-violent crimes.

KIM GIBSON / FLORIDA COURIER

The National Football League matchup on Dec. 27 between the Miami Dolphins and the Indianapolis Colts featured former University of Miami Hurricane players, left to right: Andre Johnson, Frank Gore, Lamar Miller, Stephen Morris, Phillip Dorsett and Olivier Vernon. The Colts beat the Dolphins at home, 18-12.

Brown files new challenge to district changes

BY BRANDON LARRABEE THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – Arguing that an east-west configuration for her district “combines far-flung communities worlds apart culturally and geographically,” lawyers for U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown asked a federal judge Tuesday to void Florida’s latest congressional redistricting plan.

The complaint continues a legal battle over the state’s political boundaries that has raged for nearly four years.

The first two Rep. Corrine drafts of a conBrown gressional plan – approved by the Legislature in 2012 and tweaked in 2014 –were thrown out by state

ALSO INSIDE

courts for violating a voter-approved ban on political gerrymandering.

But the reorientation of Brown’s congressional district, which has long ambled from Jacksonville to Orlando but now would run from Jacksonville in the east to Gadsden County in the west, prompted the Democratic congresswoman to file suit this year against the change. After the Florida Supreme Court officially approved the new district early this month, Brown was allowed to update her case Tuesday.

‘Substantial benefits’

the community she represents, brings infrastructure money to the district, helps Black residents obtain government contracts, brings job fairs to the district, and is very accessible to her constituents,” the complaint says.

Brown’s Jacksonville-to-Orlando seat has long been at the center of conflicts in Florida over gerrymandered districts. Critics see it as an attempt to aid Republican campaigns, especially those in Central Florida, by concentrating African-American Democratic voters in a single district. But supporters say it ensures those voters the chance to elect a candidate of their choice.

“Black voters have reaped substantial benefits by being in a Black justices critical district in which they can elect The Florida Supreme Court a candidate of their choice, in- ruled that the updated district cluding having a representative would allow Blackvoters to domiwho understands the needs of nate the Democratic primary and

that the district’s Democratic tilt means that candidates favored

by Blacks should be able to be reelected.

The court’s two Black members also sharply rebuked Brown, though not by name, in the opinion early this month. Brown had compared the changes in her district to slavery during a press conference.

“The efforts to paint this process as partisan or invoke the antebellum period are an unjustified attack on the integrity of our judicial system,” wrote Justice James E.C. Perry, in an opinion joined by Justice Peggy Quince. “...Originally, the right to vote was limited to White male landowners. Others had to fight and die for the privilege to be extended to them. It is an insult to their struggle for politicians to now use that sacrifice for personal benefit.”

Gets judges involved A coalition of opponents is pushing a measure – SB 314

by Senate Judiciary Chairman Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami –that would require judges to sign off on juvenile-to-adult court transfers. The bills are filed for the 2016 legislative session, which starts Jan. 12.

“Due process is the hallmark of our justice system, and I think See CRIME, Page A2

SNAPSHOTS FLORIDA | A3

New human trafficking law goes into effect NATION | A6

Gun control order coming from Obama

COMMENTARY: HAVE HIP-HOP AND WALL STREET DESTROYED SOUL MUSIC? | A4 COMMENTARY: JAMES CLINGMAN: STOP LOOKING FOR WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE | A5

OBITUARY | B2

Meadowlark Lemon dies at 83

FOCUS

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JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

This is your year!

Every year around this time, I tell my family, friends and loved ones, “This will be your year!”

I am right. But in all seriousness, the change in years and dates have nothing to do with it.

We all have to make it our year! We have to make a new day!

Mind power Too many of us still feel a need to be dependent.

We think we need a savior. We think we need a benefactor. We think we

LUCIUS GANTT THE GANTT REPORT

need a protector. We think we need an inheritance.

What we really need is a mind change!

In 2016, African-Americans will be told we need a president, a member of Congress, a senator, or a councilman who will make our lives and our commu-

nities better.

Well, we got a Black president eight years ago, and we still suffered as a race.

Black American lives did not matter. Black communities did not prosper. Black schools did not flourish.

And Black children continued to get beaten, shot and killed in broad daylight!

Smartphones, luxury cars and expensive jewelry didn’t get us more respect.

They didn’t get us better housing or better jobs or better health care.

We need land and we need money! If you don’t

know, revolutions fought for land!

are

Do for self In 2016, we need to do more for ourselves. Don’t take my word for it, but nobody cares about us but us!

You can talk about diversity, inclusion and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, the only businesses that really seek to hire Black employees are Black businesses.

Start your own business and patronize the businesses of your brothers and sisters. Expand your customer base and your clients on a worldwide scale.

Africans would love to

do business with credible, professional AfricanAmerican business people.

Blacks in the Caribbean, in South America and in other places want your expertise, want your products and want your services!

There are more Black people on earth than there are White people, so act like you know it! That means there are more Black customers on earth than there are White customers!

Let’s love ourselves Self-hate is keeping us subservient. When we increase our love for each other, our support for each other, and begin to spend

CRIME from A1

that there has to be checks and balances,” said Wansley Walters, a former secretary of the state Department of Juvenile Justice and a backer of the Senate bill.

“And I absolutely believe that our society has to have that with children.”

But supporters of direct file say it works and that it is necessary for public safety. They point to the state’s crime rate, which is at a 44-year low. Juvenile arrests statewide dropped 4 percent for fiscal year 2014-2015 – for a total decline of 32 percent over the past five years.

System not broken “We don’t direct-file on anybody but dangerous people,” said Tallahassee-based State Attorney Willie Meggs, whose office prosecutes cases in six counties.

“It gives us the ability to have jurisdiction over that person for a much, much longer period of time. … If we direct-file on them, and get them into the adult system, then they’re treated as adults, and you can have them on probation for the rest of their life – if it is necessary.”

About 9 percent of the state’s juvenile offenders are described as “serious, violent, chronic offenders,” according to the Department Juvenile Justice.

BETHANY MOLLENKOF/LOS ANGELES TIMES/MCT

A new arrival at a girls’ juvenile detention center has her handcuffs removed.

The Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association supports the House version of the bill – HB 129, filed by Rep. Katie Edwards, D-Plantation, Rep. Kathleen Peters, R-Treasure Island, and Rep. Bobby Powell, D-Riviera Beach – that puts some limits on prosecutors but doesn’t include review by judges.

Edwards also proposed a bill for the 2015 session that would have restrained the use of direct file, but it faced opposition from prosecutors and died. The House bill filed for the 2016 session initially called for allowing judicial

review. But the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee changed the bill this month, removing the judicial review –- despite the sponsors’ objections – and then passed it unanimously.

As it stands, the House bill would eliminate the current practice of what is known as “mandatory” direct file, which requires prosecutors to send juveniles to adult court under certain circumstances. For instance, a prosecutor faced with a 16- or 17-year-old who has been found guilty of committing a violent crime in the past and is charged

with another violent offense must transfer the youth to adult court. Under the House bill, that would be discretionary.

Two-tiered system The House bill also would modify current discretionary use of direct file, creating a twotiered system, based on age and severity of offense, in which prosecutors could choose to transfer juveniles to adult court.

“Direct filing should be a serious matter, of a serious nature,” said House Judiciary Chairman

OUR TOP 10 STORIES

2015 from Page 1

ownership, and included commentary from pastors and Black gun experts who are urging Black Americans to legally arm themselves to protect themselves and their families and institutions from gun violence.

4

Florida’s dysfunctional GOP-dominated legislature and Gov. Rick Scott’s vetoes – As 2015 wound down, four Florida legislative sessions had been held. Three of them ended in failure, and the fourth only succeeded with the threat of a government shutdown looming. Two of the three redistricting plans passed by the Republicandominated Florida Legislature in 2012 – one of them tweaked in 2014 – were declared unconstitutional, either by the courts or by lawmakers themselves. The Department of Education wrestled with an embarrassing technology meltdown. Scott incensed Republican lawmakers when he veto millions of dollars of state projects. The Florida Courier identified where Scott’s vetoes specifically impacted Black Floridians, including taking appropriations away from Bethune-Cookman University’s entrepreneurial program, as well as infrastructure projects for roads, sewers, and drainage projects in small cities with high-density Black populations.

5

Police killings and atrocities – To date, 1,192 people have been killed by police in America during the calendar year 2015, according to the website killedbypolice.net. The deaths of Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and Walter Scott, among others, received national attention after they were all killed by police officers or while they were in police custody. In Florida, 31-year-old Corey Jones, a church musician whose car broke down on I-95, was killed by an undercover police officer who

A Florida Courier series discussed “Negroes With Guns.”

FAMU President Dr. Elmira Mangum barely kept her job amid board turmoil.

B-CU President Edison Jackson was questioned about millions of dollars allegedly squandered by the school.

President Obama sings “Amazing Grace” as he delivers a eulogy at the funeral of South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney, killed June 17 at church.

FILE PHOTOS

failed to identify himself. Jones, who was unarmed, was one of 79 people killed by police in Florida in 2015. In Oklahoma, police officer Daniel Holtzclaw was arrested and convicted of raping 13 Black women over a seven month-period while he was on duty.

6

HBCU drama in Florida – Bethune-Cookman University President Edison Jackson came under fire from a longtime trustee and numerous national alumni chapters for objecting to a forensic audit to determine if millions of dollars had been misspent due to alleged fraud in conjunction with a $75 million dormitory construction project. B-CU leadership was also criticized for giving Scott the school’s highest achievement

award even, after Scott cut hundred of thousands of state dollars allocated to the university.

At Florida A&M University, President Elmira Mangum barely survived a pitched battle with a cadre of trustees who wanted to oust her from her job.

7

Obama defies lame-duck status – The president racked up a number of victories from his perspective, including tax cuts and credits, restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba, an international global climate agreement, passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a multiyear transportation bill, negotiating major amendments to the George W. Bush-era educational law, No Child Left Behind – despite continued entrenched opposition from the Republican-controlled U.S.

House and Senate. He got an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court, whose generally favorable interpretations of the Affordable Care Act will allow most of “Obamacare” to remain intact. Obama pardoned a number of nonviolent drug offenders – including a handful of Black Floridians – who no longer have to serve long federal prison sentences. However, he has been unwilling or unable to make any systemic change to benefit Black America with regard to entrepreneurship, disproportionate unemployment, and the dysfunctional criminal justice system, among other issues.

8

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – The Congressional Black Caucus has already lined up to unconditionally support Hillary Clinton

more of our money with each other, we will be better off.

Happy New Year to the readers and supporters of The Gantt Report. Thank you for all you have done for me, and for all you can do for yourself and for people in the world that are just like you!

Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net.

“Like” The Gantt Report page on Facebook. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net.

Charles McBurney, R-Jacksonville. “You should not be able to direct-file on a misdemeanor.”

As a prosecutor in the 1980s, McBurney said, he used direct file to transfer juveniles to adult courts in Northeast Florida, but only for habitual violent offenders.

The House bill is a work in progress, McBurney said. He would not speculate on which chamber’s version would prevail.

But Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, said the Senate bill – which contains both the tiered system and the right to judicial review – is more “balanced” than the House version.

“Under the Senate bill, you can still be treated as an adult under our criminal justice system,” Bradley said. “That doesn’t change. All the Senate bill does is ensure that there is an extra layer of review, and that review is in the hands of a judge. … We have judges to look at both sides, both the defense and the prosecution, and then make a reasoned judgment after hearing all the evidence.”

Both sides agree that the use of direct file has declined.

“Now we direct-file sparingly,” said Buddy Jacobs, general counsel for the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, who also said the practice had been used “very judiciously” by the prosecutors. From fiscal year 2008-09 to fiscal year 2013-2014, Jacobs said the number of direct files decreased by 53 percent.

without making policy demands.

Her campaign is having continuing meetings with Black Life Matters leadership in an effort to get out the crucial Black vote in the November 2016 general election.

Trump recently met with a group of Black pastors, with little results. Neither the GOP, the Democratic Party, nor its candidates have “Black” issues, including (but not limited to) entrepreneurship, disproportionate unemployment, and the dysfunctional criminal justice systems the top of their policy agendas or campaign platforms.

9

The Supreme Court reviews affirmative action – This month, for the second time, justices are reviewing the University of Texas’ college admission program, which uses race as a consideration (among others) for admission into the university. A decision is expected in the spring of 2016.

10

Notable deaths – Edward W. Brooke, first Black elected U.S. senator, 95 (died Jan. 3); ESPN anchor Stuart Scott, 49 (Jan. 4); Andrae Crouch, legendary gospel performer, 75 (Jan. 8); baseball legend Ernie Banks, 83 (Jan. 23); blues legend B.B. King, 89 (May 14); Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, 22 (July 26); Julian Bond, civil rights pioneer and longtime board chairman of the NAACP, 75 (Aug. 15); Amelia Boynton Robinson, voting rights matriarch beaten at Selma’s “Bloody Sunday,’’104 (Aug. 26); basketball great Darryl Dawkins, 58 (Aug. 27); basketball legend Moses Malone, 60 (Sept. 13); “When A Man Loves A Woman” crooner Percy Sledge, 74 (April 14); “Stand By Me’’ singer Ben E. King, 76 (April 30); Evangeline Moore (85), surviving daughter of slain civil rights heroes Harry T. and Harriett Moore who were killed by the KKK in Mims, Fla. (Oct. 26); native Floridian and world-class sprinter Houston McTear, 58 (Nov. 1); Florida’s first Black Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw, 85, (Dec. 14); William Guest of Gladys Knight and the Pips, 74 (Dec. 24); Harlem Globetrotter Meadowlark Lemon, 83 (Dec. 27).

FLORIDA

JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

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New law on human trafficking goes into effect Signs aimed to raise awareness are to be posted in a wide range of places around the state.

BY JIM TURNER THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – Signs intended to raise awareness about human trafficking were expected to be prominently displayed at rest areas, airports, emergency rooms and strip clubs starting Jan. 1, as a law passed during the 2015 legislative session goes into effect.

Another new law revises requirements for athletic trainers, while a portion of a tax-cut package also is put in place.

The new laws taking effect are almost the last of 232 bills that came out of the 2015 session. The bulk went into effect July 1.

The last of the 2015 bills (HB 1215) – repealing the Alachua County Boundary Adjustment Act, which is a law regarding annexations – takes effect Feb. 29.

Top Bondi issue The law (HB 369) aimed at raising awareness about human trafficking requires signs to be posted in a wide range of places, including rest areas, turnpike service plazas, weigh stations, welcome centers, airports and strip clubs.

The requirement was part of a series of proposals approved this year and signed by Gov. Rick Scott as the state tries to crack down on human trafficking for sex or forced labor. Attorney General Pam Bondi has made the issue one of her priorities.

“Raising awareness is a

key component to stopping human trafficking and helping victims get the help and services they desperately need,” Whitney Ray, a spokesman for Bondi, said in an email.

Airports to ERs The law, in part, requires the Florida Department of Transportation to display English- and Spanish-language signs that are at least 8.5 inches by 11 inches at every rest area, turnpike service plaza, weigh station, primary airport, passenger rail station and welcome center open to the public.

Evelyn Hernandez, a Department of Transportation spokeswoman, said in an email that the agency is working with airports and rail stations to determine the number of public-awareness signs needed at each facility.

“Some of these facilities have chosen to make and install their own publicawareness signs and some facilities have chosen to use the FDOT’s publicawareness signs,” Hernandez said.

The signs, which include phone and text-message numbers to report trafficking, are also required to go up in hospital emergency rooms and to be “in a conspicuous location that is clearly visible” at strip clubs, adult entertainment establishments and massage parlors.

Related laws The law doesn’t impose penalties for failure to comply with the law. However, the measure gives county commissions the ability to set noncriminal fines of up to $500 for strip clubs, adult entertainment establishments and massage parlors.

A trio of other trafficking-related measures from

DEEBA YAVROM/MIAMI HERALD/TNS

Club Madonna strippers walk around the club’s lounge on Feb. 16, 2012, in South Beach. The club, which was billed as Miami Beach’s only all-nude strip joint and dry bar, had its license pulled in the wake of allegations that it allowed a 13-year-old girl to dance naked on stage. Three defendants accused of forcing a 13-year-old runaway girl into prostitution and dancing nude at the club accepted plea deals in October 2014. the 2015 session went into effect Oct. 1. They increased criminal penalties for people who solicit others to commit prostitution (HB 465) and created public-records exemptions to protect the identities of human-trafficking victims and to shield the location of safe houses for victims of sexual exploitation (HB 467 and HB 469).

Change for trainers Also taking effect on Jan.

1 was a law dealing with regulation and licensing of athletic trainers. In part, it would remove a requirement that applicants to be licensed as trainers must be at least 21 years old.

The measure includes other changes such as requiring that people who apply to become athletic trainers as of July 1, 2016, undergo criminal background checks and be certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the use

The real cost of a Disney World vacation Out-of-state families share what they spent during November trip

BY SANDRA PEDICINI ORLANDO SENTINEL (TNS)

ORLANDO — Can you still get a deal on a Disney vacation?

Three families who traveled to Disney World in November tracked their spending, reporting it to the Orlando Sentinel and sharing their thoughts.

Their accommodations ranged from the budget All-Star Music Resort to the top-of-the-line Polynesian Village Resort.

Last year, prices for one day at the Magic Kingdom went past $100 and annual pass costs increased by triple digits. Joe DeFazio, a travel agent who worked with one family, says that hasn’t slowed interest in Disney.

However, “I think what you’re seeing is people evaluating where they may stay or how they may approach their vacation a little differently,” he said.

“It may be moving from a moderate to a value (hotel), that type of thing; 10 days to seven days.”

November is generally considered one of Disney’s less expensive months although prices tend to increase during the week of Thanksgiving.

The dining plan The three families who visited last month were: Lynn and Daniel Wiltse of Hilton Head, S.C., are passholders who try to keep costs down because they visit a few times a year.

Daniel, 38, is a fire marshal. Lynn, 33, works as a receptionist. They have three kids, ages 3 to 11.

Elaine and Michael Carpenter of Pearl River, N.Y., made their first trip to Disney. Michael, 50, works in construction. Elaine, 41, is a senior caregiver. They

have two children, ages 7 and 5.

Kim and Blair LaCour of Avon Lake, Ohio, have taken several Disney trips and cruises over the past few years. Blair, 42, is a computer consulting manager and Kim, 36, is a stay-athome mom who plans Disney-focused vacations for family and friends. They have three children, 5 to 9 years old.

One thing the families had in common: They visited during a time when they could get the Disney Dining Plan for free. That deal — often offered during the slower fall months — erases hundreds or potentially more than $1,000 from a trip’s cost. Quickservice or regular dining plans, each providing two meals, a snack and a refillable mug, cost $42 or $60 per day for adults, $16 or $19 for children. The Carpenters shifted their vacation time to qualify for the deal.

Tax credit stands Also taking effect is a piece of a $428.9 million tax-cut package approved in a June special session.

The bill keeps active a tax credit for groups such as Habitat for Humanity and Building Homes for Heroes for certain projects within areas of former enterprise zones.

Lawmakers in the 2015 one on the way home.

The dining plan the Wiltses used ordinarily would have cost $1,530. A lessexpensive one was included for free in their package, though DeFazio estimated the family paid $423 extra to upgrade to one that included table-service restaurants.

This time, the Wiltses chose to forego the extras such as Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party.

Between seeing the parks decked out for the holidays and a last viewing of the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights, Wiltse said, “I don’t think we missed out.”

‘Very overpriced’

$1,210 per person The Wiltses’ seven-day stay ended on Thanksgiving. They estimated their cost as $6,052 — $1,210 a person — including five annual passes.

They bought a package costing $3,990 that included a stay in a family suite at the All-Star Music Resort, two park hopper tickets and the dining plan. They paid extra to upgrade their quick-service dining plan that was offered for free at budget resorts to one that included sit-down meals, DeFazio said.

The family then used $1,260 credit from the two park hopper tickets toward five annual passes.

The Wiltses were able to renew four annual passes at the old rates, paying $590 apiece for four people. A brand-new pass for

of automated external defibrillators.

TNS

A trip to see Minnie and Mickey Mouse at Disney World in Orlando got more expensive last year.

Prices for one day at the Magic Kingdom are now over $100 and annual pass costs increased by triple digits in 2015. their 3-year-old daughter cost $797.

“It definitely can be frustrating when you see the price increase,” said Lynn Wiltse, who blogs about Disney but received no discounts. “I try to look at it bigger picture, of what you get in the Disney experience with your annual

pass and how many times we come a year.”

No Mickey party The family limited extra purchases, just a $15 stuffed animal, and kept travel costs to a minimum.

They paid $150 for two tanks of gas and two meals, one on the way down and

For the Carpenters, the trip from Nov. 13 to 20 was a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

They signed up for credit cards that provided them with a perk: $400 in gift cards that offset their cost.

Once in the parks, “we really didn’t spend a whole lot of money there,” Elaine Carpenter said. “Everything was obviously very overpriced.”

The Carpenters reported their total cost at $5,200, or $1,300 a person. That included the gift cards they applied and $1,070 for plane fare.

Lodging at the moderate Caribbean Beach Resort and theme-park admission cost $3,085. To avoid buying extra food in the parks, the family spent $90 for extra food delivered from a service called Garden Grocer.

Gifts and souvenirs came to $145, including a $17 autograph book for 7-yearold Calum and a $20 stuffed animal for 5-yearold Eden. The Carpenters also sprung for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party tickets, another $300.

“No regrets; no need to rush back,” Elaine Carpenter said of the trip. “The free dining was a huge factor for us … so we felt we got a good enough deal.”

The standard dining plan would have cost the Carpenters about $1,110

session agreed not to reauthorize the enterprise zones program, but through the tax-cut package the credits will remain available through Dec. 31, 2018.

The majority of the tax cut package (HB 33-A) – highlighted by a reduction in the communicationsservices tax on cell-phone and cable-TV bills became active July 1. for their weeklong stay.

$1,450 per person Kim LaCour does not try to do Disney on a budget.

“It’s not an inexpensive trip to begin with,” she said.

“When we do it, we want to do it right. … We like to be right by the monorail and have that top-notch service and special touches.”

The LaCours spent $7,250 — $1,450 a person during their stay that ended the day before Thanksgiving. The bulk of that cost was a $5,257.58 package that included six nights of a standard room at the Polynesian and five days of theme-park admission.

LaCour said she received no discounts but earned a booking commission of $477.20.

The LaCours spent $300 on tips, alcohol, sodas and coffee, and a few extra quick-service meals.

Expenses included $34 for boat rental at the Polynesian, $55 for stroller rental and $169 for advance purchase of a Memory Maker package of digital photos taken on rides and by Disney’s photographers. (Advance purchase since has dropped to $149.)

The standard dining plan the LaCours got as part of their package ordinarily would have cost about $1,066 for their sixnight stay.

LaCour tallied the costs for herself, her husband and kids. Her father and nephew traveled with them but stayed in a separate hotel room.

“It’s a supply and demand thing,” LaCour said of the increasing expense of a Disney vacation. “For the experience that Disney gives, it does cost and also really in order to maintain the crowds … they have to make sure they price it appropriately. That means the prices do go up.”

EDITORIAL

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JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

Have hip-hop and Wall Street destroyed soul music?

We have always had a strong affinity for music. Soon after our forefathers were let off the slave ships and sold to plantations we started singing. Much of that was developed in the “Motherland.”

We were visiting Kenya and went to a music event. One of our hosts told us that the entertainment was from the Congo. I started to hear some similarity with Afro-Cuban jazz. Later, the host said that they prefer Congo music as opposed to Afro-Cuban jazz, because the rhythm is pure and unadulterated Congo. It was enslaved Africans from the Congo who brought it to Cuba.

Blues and jazz were probably the first commercial Black music.

Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey did a lot to promote “rotgut” blues.

Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong and the great Lena Horne were leaders in jazzing the genre up. Blacks became some of the best jazz singers and musicians. Eventually, Soul evolved from those two genres.

Copy and sell There wasn’t much money in the business for Blacks. But when Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis (among others) copied it, White radio stations became the biggest vehicle in getting the general population to embrace it. Even goody-goody Pat Boone would wait, copy Little Richard releases, and profit handsomely.

This type of exploitation was immense. Find hot tunes recorded by Black artists; redo them with acceptable White artists; blast them through White radio stations; and ban the original Black artists from radio play.

It wasn’t until 1956 that a Blackowned radio station, WCHB in Detroit/Inkster, Mich., went on the air. This would be the start of

HARRY C. ALFORD NNPA COLUMNIST

Soul music is disappearing from radio as conglomerates control the radio population and are beholding to Wall Street investors. the immense popularity of Black music.

Breaking through Soon Black stations would start popping up across the nation.

Sales of Black music were jumping. Thus, White-owned stations were pressed to start playing Black music. Before then, they would only play ‘acceptable’ Black artists like Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt and Ray Charles.

A big milestone was the great Barry Gordy’s founding of Motown in 1959. His artists had a silky-smooth style of music (compared to rhythm and blues).

It became known as “Soul.”

I was 11 years old and immediately fell in love with Motown hits. So did the vast majority of Blacks. What was significant was that Whites, Hispanics, Asians, etc. were equally in love with this Soul music.

There were many Motown subsidiary labels such as Tamla and Gordy. Eventually, Al Bell would

Time for a new year’s revolution The worldview, class outlook and methods of nonprofit organizations have dominated the landscape of the U.S. left for so long, most of us are hardly aware of them.

Movement elder Warren Mar, in this week’s Black Agenda Report, sheds some useful light on those matters in his indispensable article “Why Nonprofits Can’t Lead the 99%” sketching some of the effects and outcomes of the nonprofit ground rules and mindset upon unions and community-based organizations.

No peoples’ movement Wherever the habits and worldview of the nonprofit world came from, it wasn’t the peoples’ movement.

Things were hard everywhere eighty years ago during the Great Depression. People were starving. Unions were often illegal, there was no minimum wage or

BRUCE A. DIXON BLACK AGENDA REPORT

social security, no anti-discrimination laws or unemployment insurance, and Jim Crow was the letter of the law.

Still, people managed to organize, to fight the power and to win some important victories, pretty much without the kinds of single-issue organizations people nowadays regard as essential.

So where did that model come from? The single-issue organization seems to be a creature of the 1960s and 1970s, a kind of blocking response to a broad-based movement on the part of elite funders.

They know nobody’s going to an anti-pollution meeting on

Why I celebrate Kwanzaa It’s a curious thing that so many Black Americans – who insist on calling themselves African-Americans – know so little about their American heritage, and even less about their African ancestry. But this is probably because “Black pride” is about as ethereal and subjective as religious faith.

Nonetheless, just as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us the objective value of judging people “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” I humbly suggest that racial pride should be based not on the assumption of things unseen, but

ANTHONY L. HALL, ESQ. FLORIDA COURIER COLUMNIST

on substance of deeds done.

It is in this spirit of racial enlightenment that I celebrate Kwanzaa (December 26 to January 1). In so doing, I pay homage to the Afrocentric Dr. Maulana Karenga who founded this holiday in 1966 “not to substitute for

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: ISIS VS. SAUDI ARABIA

launch the Stax label. White businesses would launch Atlantic, which triggered many investors to launch their own labels.

Soul music became a multibillion-dollar industry. But here was the money going?

Not getting paid Very few of the artists were becoming wealthy. Most lacked proper legal representation. Many of the principals were predatory and managed the get the lion’s share of the business. A popular arrangement would be the artist would get two to three percent of the sales – and much of that was doctored.

Major record companies were preying upon Black labels. If they wouldn’t sell their companies for a discounted rate, then the moguls would steal their artists for a signing bonus. (Go see the play “Motown.” It explains what Barry Gordy had to go through in keeping his company.)

Writers like Holland, Dozier and Holland would leave for a nice bonus and then turn on Motown with the aim of ruining them. Popular singer Mary Wells left Motown for a White-owned label. When she realized it was a mistake, she tried to blame it on Motown. A long-lasting lawsuit was filed. She would soon die of lung cancer – broke and broken.

All of her hits still belong to Motown as well as the many Holland, Dozier and Holland blockbusters.

Then came cable television and video programs. MTV was immensely popular, but they would only play Prince and Michael Jackson.

That would change when the great entrepreneur Bob Johnson would change the landscape with Black Entertainment Television – BET. Soon

Monday, a housing meeting on Tuesday, a school meeting on Wednesday, a police and prison meeting on Thursday and so on.

And if all of them are in competition for the same funding dollars, so much the better.

Not movement-based Similarly, the nonprofit models of “movement” or advocacy organization led by self-selected, usually college-educated executive directors, senior staff, and self-perpetuating boards of directors with heavy representation from philanthropic funders are creations of funders – not of members or of a broad massbased political movement.

If membership is defined in these sorts of organizations at all, it might consist of people who pay dues, or people who show up at meetings, or just people on a mailing list. Rarely do members get access to anything like transparency on how funds are handled, or have the power to replace their shot-calling directors and board members.

Truth is, the nonprofit model is anti-democratic, top-down and ideally suited to what Adolph Christmas,” but to reaffirm what it is to be of African ancestry.

More important, though, if all Black people endeavored to live according to the seven guiding principles (Nguzo Saba) of Kwanzaa, then having Black pride would entail far more than spouting off hollow rhetoric: 1. Umoja: (oo-MO-jah) Unity stresses the importance of togetherness for the family and the community, which is reflected in the African saying, “I am We” or “I am because We are.”

2. Kujichagulia: (koo-geecha-goo-LEE-yah) Self-determination requires that we define our common interests and make decisions that are in the best interest of our family and community.

WOLVERTON, CAGLE CARTOONS

Black artists were as successful on television as they were on radio. The bright future was just ahead as Soul was accepted as mainstream.

But then came a negative shift.

Hip-hop was developed in New York City. Street gangs were popping up in every city and town.

The merging of these two things became a cult.

Coastal ‘beef’ Wall Street saw this as a vehicle to take over or even kill the evergrowing Soul industry. Hip-hop was “gangsta.” It has contributed to the rising violence in our communities. Tupac Shakur (West Coast) and Biggy Smalls (East Coast) were the leaders of this genre. They fought each other for very little reasons. In the end, both were assassinated and the crimes go unsolved.

According to Village Voice: “The hip-hop movement has become increasingly mainstream as the music industry has taken control of it. Essentially, from the moment ‘Rapper’s Delight’ went platinum, hip-hop the folk cul-

Reed calls the “broker type” of leader, the unaccountable spokesperson purporting to be the mouthpiece of some united mass constituency with no real power over its alleged leader.

Energetic and charismatic leaders of nonprofit organizations often sustain impressive mobilizations, at least over a short time, but they inevitably fall short on educating their members out of dependence on self-selected or funder-selected leaders (if they define members at all) and on expanding the base of their leadership.

Nonprofit formations can make impressive use of Facebook and social media too, but these are mobilizing tools allowing you to communicate with other activists – those who already agree with you – not organizing tools one can use to identify potential leaders and win over audiences who don’t already agree.

All about the vote

3. Ujima: (oo-GEE-mah) Collective Work and Responsibility remind us of our obligation to the past, present, and future, and that we have a role to play in the community, society, and world.

4. Ujamaa (oo-JAH-mah) Cooperative economics emphasizes our collective economic strength and encourages us to meet common needs through mutual support.

5. Nia (NEE-yah) Purpose encourages us to look within ourselves and to set personal goals that are beneficial to the community.

6. Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) Creativity makes use of our creative energies to build and maintain a strong and vibrant community.

7. Imani (ee-MAH-nee) Faith focuses on honoring the best of our traditions, draws upon the best in ourselves, and helps us strive for a higher level of life for humankind, by affirming our self-worth and confidence in our ability to succeed and triumph in righteous struggle.

In fact, with these guiding principles, Blacks should come to celebrate Kwanzaa the way Jews celebrate Hanukkah.

Happy Kwanzaa !

CREDO OF THE BLACK PRESS The Black Press believes that Americans can best lead the world away from racism and national antagonism when it accords to every person, regardless of race, color or creed, full human and legal rights. Hating no person, fearing no person. The Black Press strives to help every person in the firm belief...that all are hurt as long as anyone is held back.

Dr. Valerie Rawls-Cherry, Human Resources

Charles W. Cherry, Sr. (1928-2004), Founder Julia T. Cherry, Senior Managing Member, Central Florida Communicators Group, LLC Dr. Glenn W. Cherry, Cassandra CherryKittles, Charles W. Cherry II, Managing Members

our movement extends to taking power, we have to train a broad base of people to wield power over their own organizations, and to contend for power over their lives, their economies, their communities with those who have that power now.

With only a week left in 2015, and a world still to win, it’s time for a new year’s revolution. It’s time to drop the habits of the nonprofit world; time to raise up organizations accountable to well-defined memberships. It’s time to focus on expanding our base, not talking to other activists on Facebook; not on keeping the same few leaders out front of the same few hundred demonstrators. That’s the difference between mobilizing and organizing.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor of BlackAgendaReport. com. Contact him at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com.

Dr. Glenn W. Cherry, Sales Manager

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Harry C. Alford is the cofounder and president/CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. Contact him via www.nationalbcc.org.

Dependence on the nonprofit model is all that Democratic Party honchos desire from the left.

They just need an Election Day mobilization. But if the vision of

Charles W. Cherry II, Esq., Publisher

Opinions expressed on this editorial page are those of the writers, and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of the newspaper or the publisher.

ture became hip-hop the American entertainment industry sideshow.”

Soul music is disappearing from radio as conglomerates control the radio population and are beholding to Wall Street investors. Television is no better, even with many of the Blackowned stations spending valuable time showing old reruns of Black family shows. Soul is going away.

According to Time Magazine: “In 2013, no African-American musician had a Billboard/ Hot 100 number one. This was the first time there was no number one in a year by an AfricanAmerican in the chart’s 55-year history.”

A beautiful thing is going away to “gangsta.”

Jenise Morgan, Senior Editor Angela van Emmerik, Creative Director Chicago Jones, Eugene Leach, Louis Muhammad, Lisa Rogers-Cherry, Circulation Penny Dickerson, Staff Writer Duane Fernandez Sr., Kim Gibson, Photojournalists

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Anthony L. Hall is a Bahamian native with an international law practice in Washington, D.C. Read his columns and daily weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com.

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JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

EDITORIAL

Christian terrorists and the mark of Cain Not all Christians are bigots and not all bigots are Christians, but the nonsense that is spewing from the mouths of many Christians in recent months has more than a few thoughtful people scratching their heads.

A White man walked into a Colorado Planned Parenthood health facility on Nov. 27 and began firing an automatic rifle. He killed three people and wounded nine. He did not know any of his victims personally. After being apprehended, the shooter, Robert Dear, said to the police, “No more baby parts.”

A ‘terrorist’?

The next day, a debate began to rage over whether the killer should be called a “domestic terrorist.” Those who argued against labeling the shooter a “terrorist” said that because his motives were “unknown” at this time, the terrorist label should not be applied.

Would this argument be taking place if the shooter had been a Muslim? Why do Christians get a pass when one of their number commits an atrocity?

There are those who would argue that Robert Dear does not represent the many millions of Christians in the world. This would be a satisfactory answer if it were not for the fact that many of the Christians who make that argument do not hesitate to tie all Muslims to the acts of a few violent extremists who claim affiliation with that religion.

Many White Christians see Christians generally as the “good guys,” while they see Muslims generally as the “bad guys.”

We know better

OSCAR H. BLAYTON GEORGE CURRY MEDIA COLUMNIST

There is a conscious effort to omit Christian terrorists from the dialogue about criminal violence in America and around the world. justify slavery in America. One would be hard-pressed to find a Black Christian who would argue that all Christians are without lapse in their regard for humankind.

The Black Christian community, however, often will try to insulate its religion from terrorism and hate-inspired violence by claiming that the perpetrators were not “true Christians.” The problem with separating “true Christians” from any other type of Christian is that no one can see into the heart or the mind of a believer.

The acts of a terrorist may be contrary to the majority’s interpretation of the tenants of a belief system, but that does not mean that a terrorist has not acted in accordance with his own interpretation of that belief system.

And it does not work to say that there is only one correct interpretation of the “Word of God.”

However, many Black Christians are painfully aware that A ‘Christian?’ members of the Ku Klux Klan proCatholics profess in the Nicene claim adherence to Christianity, Creed – a pronouncement of their and that Christianity was used to faith – to believe in the “resurrec-

Stop looking for what we already have Seeking internal – instead of external – relief and relying on our own resources is the practical way to solve most of our problems. This passage from Dr. Amos Wilson’s book, “Afrikan-Centered Consciousness vs. the New World Order” illustrates my point: “Myopia is a deficiency of the eye, the inability to see clearly at a distance, or in this case, the lack of foresight. During the Harlem Renaissance, many of the leading Black writers protested vigorously and complained without end that White publishing concerns would not…publish or even review their works. This of course was true and in many cases remains so.

“But what these august champions of race pride seemed to have overlooked, or could not see through their obsequious begging, was the UNIA’s publishing house, run by the African Communities League, located squarely in the heart of 135th Street, Harlem. At the time, books,

JAMES CLINGMAN NNPA COLUMNIST

pamphlets, newspapers and other materials were typeset, printed, bound and shipped to distant places on the globe through the UNIA’s book department. With over six million card-carrying members of the UNIA, the literary lights surely would have found a ready market for their products, without having to depend on White largesse.”

Controlled by others Looking for, rather than using what we already have, has pushed us further down the economic ladder. Many of our “leaders” have come to depend on others to fund their organizations and

The underbelly of America’s ‘exceptionalism’ The horrific killing sprees at the Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs, Colo. and at a health department holiday parLEE A. ty in San Bernardino, Calif. unDANIELS derscore the fact that there’s a poisonous spirit gouging deep GEORGE CURRY MEDIA trenches in the surface of AmerCOLUMNIST ican society now. It has many causes and shows itself in numer- it: “More than one a day.” ous ways.

The second “edge” of these killBut its most shocking manifes- ings is even more poisonous. That tation – these mass shootings – is how politicized the reaction to has a double edge to it. them has become, as exemplified by the response of Democratic Regular tragedies and Republican politicians to the The first is how “routine” the two latest shocking incidents. incidence of mass shootings has Immediately after both attacks, become. Experts debate wheth- Democratic politicians, led by er the number of mass shootings President Obama, along with exper year – defined by congressional researchers and other experts pressing sadness and sympathy as incidents in which at least four for the victims and their families, people were shot – have increased called on Congress to enact guncontrol legislation that balances in recent years.

But we do know that since Jan- the rights of individuals to own uary, there have been at least 354 guns with the need to reduce the such incidents, or, as the first sen- near-complete indiscriminate actence of a New York Times article cess to such weapons that now exexploring the statistics starkly put ists.

tion of the dead.” And this is not just a metaphor. Article 11 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that upon the resurrection, the “’mortal body’ will come to life again.” Many Christians who are not Catholic, and quite a few who are – all of whom profess the Nicene Creed – do not believe that the flesh of the faithful dead will arise from their tombs and be made whole again.

With the belief in the resurrection of the flesh, which is one of the essential doctrines of Christianity, being accepted or rejected on an individual basis, how can there be any strict uniformity in who is or who is not a Christian? And belief in the resurrection is only one doctrine in the very intricate Christian belief system that is rejected or accepted by self-identified adherents.

So, we have a myriad of selfdescribed believers who perceive their religion to reflect their own personal beliefs, and anyone who strays too far afield risks losing the identification of a true believer. This allows selfdescribed (and usually self-righteous) Christians to disassociate themselves from people such as Robert Dear; Dylann Roof, who murdered nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C.; or even Officer Michael Slager of the North Charleston police – who is charged with murder after shooting a Black man in the back eight times – because “good” Christians do not do things like this.

Thinking like this makes it impossible to include the term “Christian terrorist” in the dialogue on American violence. In fact, it makes it impossible to apply the term on a global scale.

The conquistadors who came to the Western Hemisphere in the 15th century and terrorized and eradicated whole civilizations of indigenous people carried the Christian cross with them and were led in prayer by their Chris-

their causes, thus causing them to be nothing more than little children who can be patted on the head and made to sit down, stand down, and shut up any time it fits the patriarch’s agenda.

Black people have a tremendous amount of resources at our disposal, but so many of us continue that sad refrain of “we need” this and that, without utilizing what we already have.

That’s a prescription for failure, brothers and sisters. Aren’t you tired of failing? Don’t you want to chalk up a few wins?

This country and this world respect power. That’s why you hear the terms “Buying Power” and “Voting Power.” These terms, however, are just euphemisms when applied to Black people.

If that was not true, Black folks would be well beyond the economic and political position we are in today.

Use our power Power is not power unless it is utilized. Otherwise, how would any group ever know it had power?As we refuse to use what we already have, we deny ourselves the power to be self-reliant, self-determined, and self-di-

Different response

A5

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: AIR POLLUTION IN CHINA

LUOJIE, CHINA DAILY, CHINA

tian priests.

Fifty years after its founding, the KKK began to conduct cross burnings not only to intimidate their targets, but also to show their reverence for Jesus Christ while they sang hymns and said prayers.

In 1934, Adolph Hitler stated in a speech: “The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity.” And in case you have forgotten, German National Socialism was more commonly known as Nazism.

Christians all. Or, at least selfprofessed Christians – and every one a terrorist.

A conscious effort The absence of language with which to identify Christian terrorists is not merely the ignorance of those political leaders and media personalities whose voices we hear and read every day. There is a conscious effort to omit Christian terrorists from the dialogue about criminal violence in America and around the world. And it will take an effort by those people who believe in justice and fairness to bring about an honest discussion about who is responsible

rected.

Just look back at examples of the economic resources we used to empower ourselves. Unfortunately we let it all slip away when we fell for the political game. We dropped everything and ran at warp speed toward getting Black people elected to public office, abandoning our economic base and abdicating our economic responsibility to future generations.

Today, we hear the cry for more Black-owned hotels, when we had a vehicle, Visions 2000, founded by Ernestine Henning and the Richard Allen Foundation, through which we could have built and owned more hotels, collectively.

We say we need more Black banks, but fail to support the ones we already have. We should be growing our banks with our own deposits, thereby creating more opportunities for more of our people.

Use our own How much of the millions held

by Black organizations is in Black banks? Members of those organizations should insist on nothing less. For example, how much NAACP money is on account at

Bernardino mass shooting provoked the GOP presidential candidates to full-throated war cries against the president and homegrown “radical Islamic terrorism,” in Donald Trump’s words.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz thundered that the San Bernardino attack proved the U.S. needs “a wartime president.” Not worrying about a “rush to judgment” of the incident, Carly Fiorina immediately declared its perpetrators’ Arabic backgrounds proved it was “a homegrown terrorist attack.”

In other words, the two mass shootings underscored what has long been apparent: That gunrights absolutists, from the National Rifle Association to the GOP candidates and elected officials, are willing to tolerate mass shootings of Americans – as long as they’re perpetrated by mentally unstable Whites or Whites whose views on gun ownership and other political and social issues seem to match their own.

The Republican response, however, was starkly different. When Robert L. Dear, Jr., a White Christian conservative, attacked the Planned Parenthood office on Nov. 27, killing three people, including a police officer, and wounding nine others, Republicans in general and the GOP presidential candidates in particular limited their remarks to muted, generalized expressions of sympathy for the victims.

They said nothing about Dear’s religious background or the phrase police officials said he muttered when captured – “no more baby parts” – which unmistakably indicated hostility to Planned Parenthood’s support of women’s right to abortion.

And they declared the violent language they use to describe those who help women seeking abortions isn’t responsible for the murderous attacks on Planned Parenthood offices, abortion clinics and doctors who provide abortions.

Nor did Republicans comment Hypocritical notion on the fact that in carrying out his That horrible reality has now rampage, Dear killed a police offi- become the leading evidence that cer acting in the line of duty. there still exists a deeply perverse underside to the society’s cher‘Homegrown terror’ ished notion of “American excepIn sharp contrast, the Dec. 2 San tionalism” – the boast that Amer-

for violent terrorism and why.

We must be a counterbalance to people like State Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt of Colorado Springs, who, when speaking of Robert Dear, said, “You cannot call him a pro-life activist, or a Colorado Springs conservative, because he is not one of us. That is not how we act.”

When pressed to explain the difference between conservative Christians not wanting to be associated with violent extremists who share their faith and moderate Muslims who likewise do not want to be associated with violent extremists who share their religion, Klingenschmitt complained that the question was not fair. “We as Christians are almost universally willing to renounce violence,” he said.

Tell that to the victims of the Conquistadors, the Klan and the Nazis. Or, tell it to the victims of Robert Dear, Dylann Roof and Officer Michael Slager.

Oscar H. Blayton is a former Marine Corps combat pilot and human rights activist who practices law in Virginia. Click on this story at www.flcourier. com to write your own response.

The Harbor Bank of Maryland in Baltimore, where the NAACP is domiciled? And we should ask other Black organizations the same thing.

What about municipal funds and employee pension money?

How much of that money resides in Black banks and Black-owned financial management firms?

We complain about Black churches, and ignore what we already have in the Collective Empowerment Group. And last but certainly not our least resource is the One Million Conscious Black Voters and Contributors, which addresses most of the problems Black people face today.

What “we need” is available now; so stop looking for what we already have.

James E. Clingman is the nation’s most prolific writer on economic empowerment for Black people. His latest book, “Black Dollars Matter! Teach Your Dollars How To Make More Sense,” is available on his website, Blackonomics.com.

Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response. ica is the most freedom-loving, peace-loving, generous and welcoming nation, etc., etc. country in human history.

There was always a lot of fluff and outright hypocrisy to that notion, especially when one contrasted it to the “exceptionalism” with which the White majority treated Americans of color and the way it acted when it felt under stress. Indeed, the full history of America shows how continually American society has always struggled to live up to its ideals.

There’s no way out of the awful predicament presented by a political party whose true campaign strategy is rooted in the underbelly of American exceptionalism – in empty boasts, outright lies, and hateful speech – except to defeat them at the ballot box.

That’s the only way the exceptionalism Americans like to think is the stuff this country is made of can have a chance to show itself.

Lee A. Daniels is a longtime journalist based in New York City. Click on this story at www. flcourier.com to write your own response.

NATION

TOJ A6

JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

New gun control measures coming from Obama President plans to issue executive order requiring background checks by sellers of firearms

ally licensed bricks-andmortar gun dealers who sometimes concede privately that they have no real problem with all gun sellers being forced to do background checks. These full-time retailers resent competition from casual unlicensed sellers at gun shows.

But the National Rifle Association’s orthodoxy — that any additional gun control is merely a first step toward bans and confiscation — holds sway in the firearms world, making outward expressions of support among gun sellers for Obama’s proposal unlikely.

BY PAUL BARRETT BLOOMBERG NEWS (TNS)

NEW YORK — The next shoe to drop on gun control may come by midJanuary, when President Barack Obama is expected to issue an executive order requiring everyone “in the business” of selling firearms to perform background checks.

Wait a second, you might be saying. Doesn’t federal law already oblige gun retailers to do computerized criminal checks via the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s database? Yes and no.

Yes, when it comes to federally licensed dealers.

But no, when you’re talking about people who lack federal licenses and sell guns from their personal collections.

An awful lot of firearms are sold in the latter fashion by individuals who aren’t technically gun retailers but who sell weapons at weekend gun shows or from their homes. Forthcoming research by the Harvard School of Public Health estimates that 40 percent of all gun transfers occur without background checks (that’s the so-called gun show loophole).

Backed by Clinton Following another a year of shooting massacres of Americans, Obama has let it be known from his

Expect lawsuits

BARBARA DAVIDSON/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Gunsmith Frank Cobet of the Get Loaded gun store in Chino, Calif., shows a customer an AR-15 rifle on Dec. 8, 2015. Gun stores in the region saw a spike in business following the shooting rampage in nearby San Bernardino. holiday retreat in Hawaii, through unidentified advisers, that soon after New Year’s Day he plans to follow through on plans to expand the definition of who’s “in the business” of selling firearms — and who’s thus required to perform background checks.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,

among others, has strongly backed this idea, and now Obama appears ready to make its implementation one of the first major acts of his final year in office.

Another fan of expanded background checks: Michael Bloomberg, owner of Bloomberg LP and founder of Everytown for Gun Safety, the nation’s lead-

ing nonprofit advocating tougher regulation of firearms. Bloomberg visited Obama at the White House last month to discuss gunsafety strategies.

Huge gun show The timing of the expected Obama move on background checks guarantees

it will receive a hostile reaction from gun-rights advocates, thousands of whom will gather this month in Las Vegas for the firearm industry’s annual Shooting, Hunting & Outdoor Trade Show, known as SHOT. An ironic twist is that many of the attendees at SHOT each year are feder-

While the enormous gathering in Las Vegas isn’t technically an NRA event, the group’s strong antiObama stance will almost certainly be evident there, and a fresh proposal to stiffen regulation may have the effect of pouring gasoline on a fire already burning hot.

There probably will be calls to challenge Obama’s authority to broaden the background check mandate without congressional involvement. Lawsuits and objections from progun Republicans on Capitol Hill will likely follow, as has happened with other efforts by the administration to use executive authority in the environmental arena.

Another sure thing: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republican presidential candidates will condemn the Obama proposal. In other words, the Great American Gun Debate will continue in 2016.

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JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

Why Virginian says this tree evokes lynching image See page B3

SHARING BLACK LIFE, STATEWIDE

What ‘Exhale’ did for women, film industry See page B5

SOUTH FLORIDA / TREASURE COAST AREA

WWW.FLCOURIER.COM

From the students at the University of Missouri to the Black women at the Emmys, these people gave us plenty to talk and tweet about last year.

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YEAR IN REVIEW

AT THE TOP OF THEIR GAME IN

2015

Silentó

BY AKILAH GREEN THE ROOT

In 2015, Black Twitter continued to slay with brilliance like #AskRachel and #ThanksgivingWithBlackFamilies, President Obama ran out of damns and started checking folks who “wanna pop off,” and Black Lives Matter cemented itself as an enduring forced with which to be reckoned.

Indeed, 2015 was punctuated with Black people being bold, brave and brilliant at almost every turn. Here are the year’s biggest winners as selected

by The Root.

Black students at University of Missouri After a series of racially charged incidents around the University of Missouri campus were met with an insufficient response from the school’s administration and university-system President Tim Wolfe, a group of students called Concerned Students 1950 coordinated activities such as boycotts and walkouts to push for their demands, including that Wolfe resign, to be heard.

Jonathan Butler, a graduate student, even instituted a personal hunger strike. When, however, the school›s Black football players, who were supported by their coaches and teammates, announced that they were going on strike until Wolfe resigned, he resigned less than 72 hours later. Not only did this situation give birth to similar protests at campuses from Yale in New Haven, Conn., to Claremont McKenna College in California, but it also reminded the nation about the extraordinary amount of power that Black athletes can wield to bring about social justice.

Black students at University of Missouri

Viola Davis

Cam Newton Not only has quarterback Cam Newton led the Carolina Panthers to become the NFL’s winningest team this season with a record of 14-1, he also signed a $103.8 million, five-year contract extension and completed his bachelor’s degree. With all of this going on, he still made time for the kids.

Through his Cam Newton Foundation, he has helped children in need by giving scholarships to students and hosting community events like the 2015 Cam’s Thanksgiving Jam, where he provided a Thanksgiving feast for nearly 900 children. Some people may question the need for his showmanship, but his winningness is undeniable.

Serena Williams

James Wright Chanel

Cam Newton

James Wright Chanel If you were to show up at a Black family gathering with a store-bought pie, you might get labeled “one of them new Negroes” and someone might mumble, “They should’ve never let her go to that White school.”

Chanel, however, changed the entire game with his now-famous video in which he taste-tested Patti LaBelle’s store-bought sweet potato pie and literally sang its praises to the tune of some of LaBelle’s greatest hits.

“Patti Pies” went from relative obscurity to selling at a rate of one Patti Pie per second almost immediately after Chanel released his video. Some people were even hawking the $3.50 pies on eBay for $40. Ms. Patti subsequently invited Chanel to her home to celebrate Thanksgiving and his birthday, and he appeared in a holiday cooking special with the icon on the Cooking Channel in December.

only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”

Uzo Aduba of “Orange is the New Black’’ won the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama series and Regina King won the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Movie. All the while, Taraji P. Henson, who was nominated in the same category as Davis, was dispensing amazing-looking hugs and standing ovations in sisterly support.

As if all of this #blackgirlmagic weren’t already enough, during the commercial breaks, Henson, Kerry Washington and Mary J. Blige blessed us with a new Apple Music commercial directed by Ava DuVernay that featured the women having a girlfriend’s dance party that redefined #SquadGoals.

Black women fat the Emmys

Serena Williams

#Blackgirlmagic was on full, dazzling display at the 2015 Emmys. Viola Davis became the first Black woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and in her acceptance speech, she dropped this pearl: “The

Williams’ tennis year included wins at the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. In the midst of all this winning (and one devastating loss), she managed to present her HSN Signature Statement collection at New

Drake

York Fashion Week, support charitable causes like the Equal Justice Initiative and chase down a man who stole her cell phone in a busy restaurant.

Most recently, she was named Sports Illustrated’s 2015 Sportsperson of the Year, the first time in more than 30 years that an individual woman has won the award.

Silentó Last year, 17-year-old Atlanta rapper Silentó introduced us to the song of the summer (and beyond) with his debut single, “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” and the accompanying viral video, which has been viewed nearly half a billion times.

The whole world, including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the Carolina Panthers, police officers and even a woman in labor bopped and broke their legs to this jam. The song reached platinum status and had amassed well over $1.5 million in sales as of September. Although Silentó began the song with, “You already know who it is,” many of us didn’t when the song came out.

But now we do. Way to speak it into existence, Silentó!

Bree Newsome

Drake Drake debuted a sexy beard and some grown-man muscles; released “Back to Back,” the first diss track ever to be nominated for a Grammy, while mercilessly dragging Meek Mill in a beef too petty to rehash here; and then turned around and cranked out the incredibly catchy «Hotline Bling,» which was accompanied by a video of Drake doing some incredibly corny (but really fun) dancing in a dad sweater.

Drake was named Spotify’s Most Streamed Artist of the Year, and while we may never know the full extent of their relationship, it appears that Drake, at a minimum, got to enjoy a brief flirtation with Serena Williams.

Bree Newsome After nine members of the congregation at Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, S.C., were killed by a gunman, Brittany “Bree” Newsome, a filmmaker who is active in the Black Lives Matter movement, courageously scaled a flagpole on the grounds of the South Carolina State See 2015, Page B2

CALENDAR

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JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

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FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR St. Petersburg: Utica College’s St. Petersburg-Tampa Learning Site clinical nursing open house is Jan. 6 from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at 9400 Fourth St. N, Suite 100. Attend the event for complimentary cocktails and hors d’oeuvres while learning about becoming a clinical instructor. RSVP at www.utica.edu/ alumni-events.

550 North Econlockhatchee Trail. Email contact@cfanarchy.com for details.

St. Petersburg: Utica College’s St. Petersburg-Tampa Learning Site clinical nursing open house is Jan. 6 from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at 9400 Fourth St. N, Suite 100. Attend the event for complimentary cocktails and hors d’oeuvres while learning about becoming a clinical instructor. RSVP at www.utica.edu/ alumni-events.

Hollywood: Kevin Hart’s What Now Tour makes a Dec. 26 stop at Hard Rock Live Hollywood. The show begins at 8 p.m.

Orlando: Central Florida Community Arts will present “The Crucible’’ Jan. 22 through Feb. 7 at Central Christian Church, 250 SW Ivanhoe Blvd. Tickets: Call 407-937-1800 ext. 710 or visit cfcarts.com/events.

Jacksonville: Catch Patti LaBelle on Jan. 28 at the Times Union Center for the Performing Arts, Feb. 5 in Miami, Feb. 6 in Fort Pierce, Feb. 20 in Orlando, Feb. 21 in Tampa and Feb. 23 in Sarasota.

Clearwater: Catch the Four Tops and the Temptations on Jan. 20 at Ruth Eckerd Hall. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.

Orlando: The Orlando Anarchy women’s tackle football team has scheduled a tryout for Jan. 9 from 10 a.m. to noon at Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico,

Ponte Verde: Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue will be at the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall on Jan. 15 Shows also are Jan. 16 at The Vinoy in St. Petersburg and Jan. 17 at the Mizner Park Amphitheater in Boca Raton.

Miami: Tickets are on sale for Katt Williams’ “Conspiracy Theory’’ show at the James L. Knight Center on Jan. 17, the USF Sun Dole in Tampa on Feb. 6 and the CFE Arena in Orlando on Feb. 19.

Tampa: Tickets are on sale for a concert by the Black Violin on Feb. 3 at the Straz Center.

Miami Gardens: Jazz in the Gardens tickets are on sale. The lineup for the March 18-20 event include Usher, Kool and the Gang along with the Average White Band.

FANTASIA DOUG E. FRESH

DICK GREGORY

A leadership luncheon with the legendary civil rights activist, entrepreneur and comedian is scheduled Jan. 20 at 11:30 a.m. at the University Area Community Development Center in Tampa. The event is part of the Tampa Bay Black Heritage Festival. www. tampablackheritage.org.

Miramar Regional Park will be site of Funk Fest Miami on New Year’s Day featuring New Edition, Fantasia, Jagged Edge, Silk, Doug E. Fresh, 2 Live Crew and Demetria McKinney. www. funkfesttour.com

Globetrotters’ Meadowlark Lemon dies at 83

BY CARL RIVERA LOS ANGELES TIMES (TNS)

Long before athletes tweeted, and in-your-face dunks and tackles could be shared by millions instantly, Meadowlark Lemon became one of the most popular sports personalities in the world.

His dazzling basketball skills and slapstick humor were a key attraction for perhaps the most famous basketball team ever, the Harlem Globetrotters. He became known as the “Clown Prince of Basketball,” appearing before presidents and kings and portraying himself in television programs, movies and cartoons.

Lemon “just had a great joy,” Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers said Monday.

He died Dec. 27 in Scottsdale, Ariz., at the age of 83. The cause of death was not known, said Brett Meister, a spokesman for the Globetrotters.

Meister said Lemon had been scheduled to fly from his Scottsdale home to Chicago to take part in taping an ESPN special as part of the Globetrotters’ 90th anniversary tour.

Broke down cultural and racial barriers Lemon spent 24 years with the Globetrotters, joining the team in 1954 and acting as ringleader and

2015

from Page 1 house and took down the Confederate flag. She was promptly arrested for refusing to respond to officers’ orders for her to come down and state officials ordered the flag to be raised again two hours later.

Nonetheless, shifting public sentiment and bold actions by Newsome and others — including retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon. com, which stopped selling Confederate-flag merchandise — prompted Alabama and South Carolina officials to finally take down the flags from statehouse grounds once and for all. Just as the flag symbolized the desire by some to preserve a system of white supremacy, the removal of that flag represented the symbolic dismantling of it.

The Currys Not only was Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry named 2015 NBA Most Valuable Player, he also won the ESPY Best Male Athlete and Best NBA Player awards and helped

showman-in-chief during the team’s heyday through the 1960s and 1970s.

Lemon and the Trotters toured more than 100 countries, introducing the sport to millions who had never before seen a basketball thrown through a hoop and breaking down cultural and racial barriers along the way.

During Lemon’s early days, the all-Black Globetrotters’ influence was no less in the United States.

The team showcased the talents of African-American players such as Reece “Goose” Tatum and dribbling wizard Marques Haynes at a time when the fledgling National Basketball Association was largely White and lacked the razzle-dazzle of America’s first show-time team.

The Globetrotters played exhibition ball, mixing theater and sports. But they were also seriously competitive, especially in the early years. Their victory in 1948 over the Minneapolis Lakers helped put the NBA on the map.

A jaw-dropping, half-court hook shot Lemon was an entertainer, smack-talking through games, chasing referees with water buckets and teasing spectators with similar buckets of confetti. The teams’ usual foils were the mostly White — and hapless — Washington Generals.

bring home the Warriors’ first NBA championship title in 40 years.

Curry also introduced us to his family, which includes his 2-year-old daughter, Riley — who made a name for herself as the real MVP when she repeatedly stole the spotlight from her dad during his NBA semifinals press conferences — as well as his wife, Ayesha, with whom he makes fun family videos. The couple also welcomed into the world their second daughter, Ryan Carson Curry.

Black cinema “Straight Outta Compton,’’ the N.W.A biopic, hopefully put the final nail in the coffin of lingering doubts about whether “Black movies” can succeed at the box office. Grossing over $200 million worldwide, “Compton’’ became the highest-grossing musical biopic ever, and director F. Gary Gray is now the highest-grossing AfricanAmerican director of a single film in domestic sales.

In November, a few months after the release of “Compton, “Creed’’ —

But Lemon backed the comedy up with jaw-dropping, half-court hook shots and no-look behind-theback passes.

“Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I’ve ever seen,” Chamberlain said during an interview with The Associated Press before his death in 1999. “People would say it would be Dr. J (Julius Erving) or even Michael Jordan. For me, it would be Meadowlark Lemon.”

Changed name in the 1950s Meadowlark Lemon was born on April 25, 1932, in Wilmington, N.C. His given name was Meadow Lemon III, according to his website, but he legally changed his name to Meadowlark in the 1950s.

At the time, he wrote that his family was so poor that he practiced by rigging a makeshift hoop with an onion sack and coat hanger. He used an empty Carnation milk can as a ball.

After a boy’s club opened nearby, he finally got to handle a real basketball, practicing his shots for as many as 18 hours a day, he wrote.

He played his first season with one of the Globetrotters’ developmental teams, the Kansas City Stars, before joining the Globetrotters in 1954.

Lemon appeared on

directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael “Bae” Jordan — was released.

By mid-December, it had grossed over $87 million worldwide. It has received critical acclaim and has been widely regarded as the best movie of Sylvester Stallone’s 39-yearold Rocky franchise since the original one.

Ta-Nehisi Coates Coates released “Between the World and Me,’’ a book that was written as a letter to his teenage son about what it is to be Black in America. The book has received near-unanimous praise from critics. It was No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and it earned Coates the 2015 National Book Award for nonfiction.

In addition, Coates received a ringing endorsement from Nobel Prizewinning author Toni Morrison, who wrote that Coates fills “the intellectual void” left by James Baldwin’s death 28 years prior.

Coates was also awarded the MacArthur fellowship, aka the “genius” grant, for his scholarship.

“The Ed Sullivan Show” and in the animated “Harlem Globetrotters” and “Scooby Doo” cartoon series.

He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003 as well as the International Clown Hall of Fame. An ordained minister, he worked as a motivational speaker until his death.

HARRY CHASE/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Los Angeles Times staff writer Broderick Turner contributed to this report.

Curley Neal, left, and Meadowlark Lemon, center, point to a number 11 on the New Jersey Reds for fouling in this file photo from 1977. Lemon died Dec. 27 at age 83.

ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE FOR BLACK STUDENTS. NO EXCUSES. The classic guide from Florida Courier publisher, lawyer and broadcaster CHARLES W. CHERRY II PRAISE FOR ‘EXCELLENCE WITHOUT EXCUSE’: “This guide for African-American college-bound students is packed with practical and insightful information for achieving academic success...The primary focus here is to equip students with the savvy and networking skills to maneuver themselves through the academic maze of higher education.”

– Book review, School Library Journal • How low expectations of Black students’ achievements can get them higher grades; • Want a great grade? Prepare to cheat!

• How Black students can program their minds for success; • Setting goals – When to tell everybody, and when to keep your mouth shut; • Black English, and why Black students must be ‘bilingual.’ …AND MUCH MORE!

www.excellencewithoutexcuse.com Download immediately as an eBook or a pdf Order softcover online, from Amazon, or your local bookstore ISBN#978-1-56385-500-9 Published by International Scholastic Press, LLC Contact Charles at ccherry2@gmail.com

Facebook ccherry2 excellencewithoutexcuse

for info on speeches, workshops, seminars, book signings, panel discussions.

Twitter @ccherry2

STOJ

JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

CULTURE

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PHOTO COURTESY OF NEW ORLEANS MAYOR’S OFFICE

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, surrounded by six of the seven New Orleans council members, signs ordinance calling for the relocation of four Confederate monuments from prominent locations in New Orleans on Dec. 17.

New Orleans votes to remove Confederate monuments TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

After several hours of heated debate, the New Orleans City Council has voted 6-1 to declare four Confederate-era monuments a nuisance, paving the way for their removal from prominent locations around the city.

The lone dissenting vote Dec. 17 was cast by Councilwoman Stacy Head.

No timetable has been set for the removal of what many Black residents have called offensive monuments, and some anticipate that the effort to remove these monuments is far from over with legal challenges to block the majority-Black council from moving forward with its efforts.

Before the council voted in a chamber that was filled beyond capacity, Mayor Mitch Landrieu told the council that the monuments should be relocated to a Civil War museum and Councilwoman Stacy Head proposed that the Liberty Monument and Jefferson Davis statue be removed while the P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee monuments be allowed to remain where they are currently located.

‘Cleanse the city’ Before the vote, National Urban League president and former New Orleans Mayor Marc H. Morial urged the City Council to vote unanimously remove the Confederate monuments.

“The Confederate States of

America waged war against the United States of America,” Morial said. “Its leaders were enemies of the United States, and its symbols are symbols of treason.

A patriotic society should have no interest in revering its enemies or honoring acts of treason.

I urge New Orleans City Council cleanse the city of the detritus of an inhumane institution.”

The former mayor said a unanimous vote would send a powerful message.

“There are those who say there are more important concerns facing the city right now,” Morial said. “I submit that there is nothing more important to a community than racial reconciliation.”

The issue is a deeply personal one, Morial said.

“As a boy at Christian Brothers School, I often walked past the P.G.T. Beauregard statues while I was learning in school about the Civil War,” he said. “I remember wondering, ‘Why is that statue still there?’ It seemed to fly in the face of everything we were being taught about the monstrousness of slavery and the staggering toll in blood and treasure that was squandered to keep it alive.

That such a thing should be celebrated in the 20th Century bewildered and disgusted me.”

Name change urged Morial had called for Lee Circle, named for Confederate General Robert E. Lee, to be renamed Tricentennial Circle in honor of the city’s 300th anniversary.

“Confederate monuments are part of our history and should be discussed and analyzed in schools and museums,” Morial said. “But places of honor in out beautiful city should be reserved for those who have enriched and enhanced its beauty and vitality.”

“Those structures are monuments that glorify people that were the terrorists and traitors of a terrible time in our country’s history,” attorney Danatus King, former president of the New Orleans Branch of the NAACP, said in an opinion piece dated Dec. 10.

“Contrary to recent arguments regarding heritage, those monuments were erected to honor those people that owned other human beings; that fought to preserve a way of life that allowed human beings to be owned like animals. That allowed women to be raped in front of their mates and children.

“Allowed human beings to be beaten, tortured and killed for not obeying their masters. Those structures were erected to honor ideas and ideals that I do not honor, that should not be honored. Allowing those structures to remain shows that those despicable people and what they stood for and fought for is still honored. Those structures must come down.

Republicans respond Before the vote, a local Republican group proposed allowing the Confederate monuments to

remain in their current locations but erecting monuments to Black historical figures.

During a spring gathering that was part of the city’s Welcome Table race relations initiative, Mayor Mitch Landrieu called for the removal of Confederate monuments honoring Robert. E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard and Jefferson Davis and another commemorating the Battle of Liberty Place and the Reconstructionera Crescent City White League.

Although a number of grassroots Black groups have been calling for the removal of the aforementioned monuments and others for years, the mayor’s proposal re-ignited the debate and prompted criticism from both Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and U.S. Sen. David Vitter, who said the mayor should focus instead on lowering the city’s rising murder rate.

Alternative presented Some Black leaders, including the Rev. Tom Watson, accused the mayor of using the debate about the removal of the monuments to distract voters from more pressing issues like violent crime, chronic unemployment among Black men and unconstitutional policing by the New Orleans Police Department which is in the midst of a federally mandated consent decree aimed at overhauling the department.

In September, the Vieux Carre Commission voted to have the 35-foot-tall obelisk removed.

“It seems apparent now that the Liberty Monument is going to go. What happens beyond that is generally up for discussion,” WWL-TV political analyst Clancy DuBos said.

The Orleans Parish Republican Executive Committee, along with

its chairman and former councilman, Jay Batt, also agreed the Liberty Place Monument should go but said it opposed the removal of the three Confederate monuments. It presented an alternative to the proposal to remove the Confederate monuments.

The GOP Committee said the city should keep the Confederate monuments in their current locations but add plaques to describe their historical context and erect new monuments to honor African-American heroes and trailblazers like Louisiana’s first Black Governor P.B.S Pinchback.

“Instead of tearing down history, which to me is tantamount of burning books, that we augment the landscape with other monuments to great Americans who were African-American as well,” said Batt.

Some Blacks were skeptical about the willingness of the city to honor Black historical figures and luminaries.

“This is a city that refuses to acknowledge the freedom struggle exemplified by the 1811 slave revolt, the largest uprising of enslaved Africans in U.S. history,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “It didn’t say a single word about the 200th anniversary of the revolt four years ago — it was like it never happened.

Lawsuit filed Just hours after the council vote, four organizations filed a federal lawsuit against the City of New Orleans in an effort to block the removal of the Confederateera monuments from their current public spaces.

The lawsuit, filed by the Louisiana Landmark Society, the Foundation for Historical Louisiana, the Monumental Task Committee and Beauregard Camp No. 130, contends that removing the monuments would violate several federal and state laws, including Louisiana’s constitution.

The case will be handled by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier.

The mayor, who said he plans to remove the monuments sooner rather than later and has already identified a contractor to carry out the work, did not seem all that concerned about the legal challenges.

“I want to thank the New Orleans City Council for their courageous decision to turn a page on our divisive past and chart the course for a more inclusive future,” Landrieu said.

“Symbols matter and should reflect who we are as a people.

These monuments do not now nor have they ever reflected the history, the strength, the richness, the diversity or the soul of who we are as a people and a city.

This story is special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Louisiana Weekly.

Strange fruit? Critic says tree at plaza honoring Black busineswoman evokes lynching image TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

The fight over a tree in the immediate vicinity of a planned Maggie L. Walker plaza is raging in Richmond, Va. Gary L. Flowers, a Richmond native and national political and civil rights operative living in Jackson Ward, has jumped into the fray with a petition drive opposing the live oak that now dominates the gateway into Jackson Ward where the monument to the great lady is to stand.

Flowers said his goal is to “galvanize support to honor Mrs. Walker in her full glory unencumbered” by the trunk and branches of the tree in the triangular downtown park at the intersection of Broad and Adams streets and Brook Road.

Chief among Flowers’ reasons: The tree would be a symbolic affront to Walker, a business leader whose contributions are legion in the African-American community and nationally at a time when the government was imposing racial segregation.

Bank founder Walker is best known as the first African-American woman to found and operate a bank — a huge accomplishment in 1903.

“Placing the statue of Mrs. Walker under a tree hearkens back to the bloody period of history when our heroes swung, in the words of Billie Holiday, like ‘strange fruit,’” Flowers said.

He stamps that point into his

petition with this strong statement: “Don’t lynch the legacy of Maggie Walker under a tree!”

Besides avoiding painful symbolism, he said clearing the tree from the plaza also would give artist Antonio Tobias “Toby” Mendez “the free space to fully celebrate the life and work of Walker.”

Flowers and his allies, including retired businessman J. Maurice Hopkins, are throwing down the gauntlet to tree supporters, including Mayor Dwight C. Jones, who see the oak as adding an additional dimension to the plaza project that is projected to cost around $600,000 for the art and other elements.

Jan. 12 hearing With Mendez still mulling a design, both sides in the tree fight are gearing up to express their views to the Richmond Public Art Commission and the city Planning Commission, which will have the final say.

The first community hearing for people to voice their views is set for Tuesday, Jan. 12.

Supporters of the tree were first to push the issue. Appalled that the statue might displace the tree, Jackson Ward resident Mariah Robinson rallied support with an online petition to save the tree she regards as “irreplaceable.”

More than 800 people signed, including Jones, who announced Dec. 3 that he was joining the “effort to preserve the special oak tree” that he said would add a symbol of strength to the monu-

ment. Flowers is now seeking to get another perspective heard in one of his first efforts to affect policy in his hometown after years of being involved in national civil rights affairs.

Most recently, he was executive director and CEO of the Washington, D.C. -based Black Leadership Forum, a coalition of 51 black political, civic and economic development groups.

‘Coalition of conscience’ Earlier, Flowers was based out of Chicago as vice president and national organizer for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

“When I returned to Richmond 18 months ago, I was euphoric when I heard about the plan to place Mrs. Walker’s statue at this intersection,” said Flowers, who has a consulting firm.

The euphoria quickly faded, he said, after he learned about Robinson’s petition to maintain the tree. He said that pushed him to take action “to bring together a coalition of conscience, regardless of race and gender, to prevent the legacy of Maggie Walker from being lynched.

“It would be wrong to have an enormous live oak tree literally cast a shadow over this tribute to her life and work,” he said. If the statue is to succeed, it needs to get the same treatment as the other major statues in Richmond, none of which are stuck under trees, said Hopkins, a member of the Maggie L. Walker High School Class of 1965.

RICHMOND FREE PRESS/TRICE EDNEY NEWS SERVICE

Gary L. Flowers stands in front of the oak tree he wants removed from the site of the proposed Maggie L. Walker statue.

“We need a 360-degree panoramic view of the statue, and that will not be possible if the tree stays,” he said.

The anti-tree petition is now online at GoPetition.com/petitions/support-Maggie-Walker-

without-a-tree.html. For additional details, contact Hopkins at hopinn@rcn.com.

This story is special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press.

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PERSONAL FINANCE

JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

STOJ

Don’t like the gift card you got for Christmas? Trade it nience and instantaneous redemption.

Executives with Blackhawk Network, which owns Cardpool, noted that the exchange rate fluctuates over time based on the supply and demand for particular cards.

BY KAVITA KUMAR STAR TRIBUNE (TNS)

Gift cards are one of the safest bets when it comes to holiday gifts, but they are not always surefire.

Maybe your grandma forgot you’re a vegetarian and gave you a gift card to Omaha Steaks. Or perhaps you don’t have an urgent need for more yoga pants so that Lululemon gift card starts collecting dust in your wallet.

Consumers looking to trade or sell their gift cards this year now have one more option. Target Corporation quietly began a gift card trade-in program in most of its stores last month. Knowing that customers will likely have unwanted gift cards after Christmas, the retailer highlighted the trade program in its recent Sunday circular.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of gift card exchange websites. They pay cash for gift cards and then resell them at a discounted rate. As this marketplace boomed, retailers began looking for ways to leverage those networks to their benefit.

“We know guests sometimes have unwanted or unused gift cards and want to give them a convenient option to put those unused

BRIAN NGUYEN/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

dollars toward shopping at Target,” said Kristy Welker, a Target spokeswoman.

About the exchanges Here’s how the Target trade-in program works: Customers bring their gift cards to the mobile phone counter in the electronics department. There, a store employee will give them an offer for a lesser amount based on the resale value of that card.

How to save big money on groceries this year

BY CAMERON HUDDLESTON GOBANKINGRATES.COM TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Grocery shopping can take a big bite out of your household budget. In fact, a family of four spends up to an average of $1,300 a month on food at home, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

That means families can shell out more than $15,000 a year on groceries.

With the right strategies you can cut your grocery spending in half or more.

Just ask Kyle Taylor, founder of personal finance blog ThePennyHoarder.com.

When he was just a teenager, he was finding ways to whittle down his family’s grocery bill to less than $20 a week. Since then, he’s launched a career in helping people save more money.

The entrepreneur is a finalist in GOBankingRates’ 2015 “Best Money Expert” competition hosted in collaboration with Ally Bank.

Taylor shared these tips to save money on groceries without spending hours clipping coupons.

There are plenty of ways to save money on groceries.

The best way is to take advantage of multiple methods of cutting costs. “We all know about couponing, but saving money is way easier when you know how to stack discounts,” Taylor said. Here’s how he piles on the savings.

Discounted gift cards The first money-saving move Taylor makes is buy-

ing discounted gift cards for supermarkets and other stores that carry grocery items, such as Target.

You can get gift cards for less than face value at sites such as Raise.com, Cardpool and Giftcard Zen. “These gift cards are sold for 1 percent to 25 percent below face value, meaning that I’ve saved money before ever stepping into the grocery store,” Taylor said.

Add on coupons Collecting coupons doesn’t have to be as time consuming as it might seem, Taylor said. Even clipping coupons can be simple.

Taylor gets the Sunday paper delivered to his doorstep and slips the grocery coupon inserts into a filing cabinet, organizing them by date. Then, before shopping each week, he uses the free Favado app to see sales in his area. Once he’s found sale items he wants to buy, he finds coupons he needs to clip to get these items for less.

Because Favado lists coupons by date, he can quickly track down the inserts he needs in his filing cabinet.

“It saves me tons of time every month because I don’t have to clip coupons I’ll never use,” he said.

Another way to collect coupons is to join a local couponing group or online coupon forum where you can trade coupons with money-saving gurus, he said. Five Dollar Dinners, meanwhile, provides lowcost ways to make your favorite meals. CoolSavings also delivers coupons

For example, a $100 WalMart gift card can be exchanged for an $85 Target gift card, the company says. If the customer accepts the offer, he or she will be handed a Target gift card on the spot. Hundreds of cards from various brands are eligible for the program.

While it is convenient, Target’s offer may not necessarily be the best deal on the market. A $100 WalMart gift card can be ex-

changed for a $93 check mailed to consumers through the gift card exchange site Cardpool.com, which is also a partner in Target’s program. Or they can get $85 to $90 for it through the site CardCash. com.

Target declined to say how much, if any, of the proceeds Target gets through the exchange.

Welker emphasized that the main goal of the tradein program is about conve-

straight to your inbox.

“Once you set up your systems, it only takes a few minutes to acquire coupons,” Taylor said.

“Grocery stores have eight- to 12-week sale cycles, so odds are that item will be on sale again soon — and you only need to stock up enough to get you to that next sale,” he said.

Download rebate apps Taylor stacks his gift card and coupon savings with grocery rebates he gets with apps like Ibotta and Checkout 51.

The Ibotta app uses your smartphone’s GPS to locate grocery stores around you. Choose your favorite and then browse rebates to find the ones you want to use. Before you shop, you’ll have to “unlock” the rebates, which usually requires reading a quick fact or watching a 15-second ad about the product. “It’s pretty easy and won’t take you much time,” he said.

When you get home from the store, click the “redeem” button on the Ibotta app and use your smartphone’s camera to take a picture of your receipt. Within 24 hours, Taylor said you’ll see cash in your Ibotta account, which you can withdraw anytime via Paypal or Venmo.

The Checkout 51 app works similarly. Select the rebates you want, purchase the items and then upload a picture of your receipt through the app or Checkout51.com. Taylor said that when your account reaches $20, Checkout 51 sends you a check.

Use rewards card If you’re responsible with credit and pay off your balance each month, you should take advantage of the savings you’ll get by us-

Most requested item

Teri Llach, Blackhawk’s chief marketing officer, noted that a company survey found that only 38 percent of consumers were aware of gift card exchanges, so there’s still lot a lot of room for growth. Cardpool generated $80 million in 2014 and has projected it will grow 40 to 50 percent this year.

“It’s still a young market,” she said. “The awareness of this capability is growing. So now retailers are saying, ‘Wait a minute, why am I not participating in this?’ ” After Christmas last year, Wal-Mart offered a Webbased, gift card trade-in program through a partnership with CardCash. com. That initiative lasted a few weeks, a WalMart spokesman said.

The retailer hasn’t said yet whether it will repeat the program this year.

In 2014, GameStop launched a similar tradein program through Cardpool, and has since rolled

Gift cards have been the most requested gift item during the holidays for the last nine years in a row, according to the National Retail Federation. Total spending on gift cards this shopping season was expected to reach $25.9 billion.

At the time same time, Americans have left more than $44 billion in gift cards go unused since 2008, according to a study published last year by CardHub. The Target trade-in program has a number of vendor partners. The employee who handles the exchange wears a black shirt, as opposed to the red shirts worn by Target employees, and is employed by an outside company called Market Source. That person also helps customer sign up for cell phone plans and handles Target’s cell phone and iPad trade-in program through another partner, Nextworth, which is also a partner in the gift card initiative.

The gift card program, which is slated to run year round, is available in about 1,500 or Target’s 1,800 stores.

ing a cash rewards credit card. Taylor suggested looking for cards that offer 2 percent or more cash back on grocery purchases.

“My saving philosophy is that stacking all of these methods is the most effective way to save, rather than depending on just one or two,” Taylor said.

“And once you set up your system — applying for a cash rewards credit card,

downloading a rebate app, buying a discounted gift card or two, organizing your coupons — it doesn’t take as much time.”

GOBankingRates.com is a leading portal for personal finance news and features, offering visitors the latest information on everything from interest rates to strategies on saving money, managing a budget and getting out of debt.

Still young market

Shoppers are shown at a Target store on Black Friday. The retailer is one of the stores with gift-card trade-in programs.

it out to its stores as well.

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Get your dose today by calling Cassandra at 386-299-4661 BuyXGnow.com/cassandrakittles

STOJ

JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

submitted for your approval

B5

Think you’re one of Florida’s Finest?

E-mail your high-resolution (200 dpi) digital photo in casual wear or bathing suit taken in front of a plain background with few distractions, to news@flcourier. com with a short biography of yourself and your contact information. (No nude/ glamour/ fashion photography, please!) In order to be considered, you must be at least 18 years of age. Acceptance of the photographs submitted is in the sole and absolute discretion of Florida Courier editors. We reserve the right to retain your photograph even if it is not published. If you are selected, you will be contacted by e-mail and further instructions will be given.

These masqueraders participated in the Seventh Annual Miami Broward One Carnival’s Parade of the Bands at the Dade County Fairgrounds recently.

The Florida Courier staff selected them as this week’s Florida’s Finest – for obvious reasons.

PHOTOS BY CHARLES W. CHERRY II / FLORIDA COURIER

right man, and Devine, who has a teenage son (Donald Faison) and has caught the fancy of her new neighbor (the late Gregory Hines).

Though the book and movie were centered on the lives of African-Americans, the audience for both transcended ethnic boundaries.

“I had a lot of White women who said, ‘Sweetie, you helped me get through my divorce,”’ noted McMillan. “Back in those days I got fan mail. There was no email, so my publisher would send me boxes of letters.”

Rochon noted women of every color and ethnicity have discussed the movie with her. Even before production began, she recalled, “Loretta Devine and I were walking through the airport somewhere in the Midwest, and all of these women came up to us. There was a group of Hispanic women who said, ‘I loved the book. You go, girl. I can’t wait to see the movie.’”

$81.5 million earned globally

Loretta Devine, Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett and Lela Rochon starred in “Waiting to Exhale.’’

The impact of ‘Waiting to Exhale’ The movie, which was released 20 years ago, showed the power of Black actresses and led to other successful movies with ethnic casts.

BY SUSAN KING LOS ANGELES TIMES (TNS)

It was an unlikely hit — a comedy-drama about four AfricanAmerican female friends dealing with issues of romance, careers and fulfillment.

But when “Waiting to Exhale” opened two decades ago this holiday season, the movie not only became a breakout success but also touched a cultural nerve with an underserved audience. “‘Waiting to Exhale’ was important 20 years ago because it gave Black women a voice and brought attention to their ideas on love and marriage,” actress Loretta Devine said in an email

interview. Devine played Gloria, a beautician, in the film. “Now, like then, women want the world to know what women want.”

Beloved by audiences who made it into a true word-ofmouth success — not to mention the subject of countless water-cooler discussions — “Waiting to Exhale” demonstrated how potent a force women could be at the box office. It led to a new generation of movies that explored similar themes with ethnic casts, such as “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” and “The Best Man.” Based on Terry McMillan’s best-selling 1992 novel — it had sold 3 million copies by the time

the movie was released — the movie starred the late Whitney Huston as Savannah, a young woman with a married boyfriend who moves from Denver to Phoenix to take on a job and reunite with her three closest friends.

Transcended ethnic boundaries With a screenplay by McMillan and Ronald Bass, “Waiting to Exhale” also starred Angela Bassett as Bernardine, a married mother of two whose husband is leaving her for his White girlfriend. Lela Rochon played Robin, who has a head for business but is clueless when it comes to finding the

Bassett, who had won acclaim two years earlier for playing Tina Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” showed her range as Bernardine, a passionate, spirited woman dealing with a complex life.

“It showed women that in spite of fractured relationships, joy, peace, love and kinship are always a possibility,” said Bassett in an email interview. “It broke perception, preconception and history.”

“Waiting to Exhale” earned $81.5 million internationally.

Part of its success was not only the cast and screenplay but actor Forest Whitaker, who made his feature directorial debut with the film.

“Everybody brought a different kind of magnetism and energy and beauty and class to the story,” said McMillan. “ I think Forest helped bring all of that. It was beautiful to watch.”

The four actresses immediately bonded on the set and remained friends.

“We all really liked each other in real life,” Rochon said. “There is some sort of quality we have that connected us.”

“We had bowling parties, sometimes visiting each other’s set on your day off,” noted Devine. “The set was a wonder-

ful place to be. It was a fun shoot, and we had a great time working and living in Arizona. We worked for almost two months on the movie. It changed our lives for the better and stepped up our careers.”

Chart-topping album A month before the film was released, the soundtrack of “Waiting to Exhale” was released featuring 17 songs composed by Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds performed by female R&B artists such as Houston, Cece Winans, Mary J. Blige and Aretha Franklin.

The soundtrack topped the Billboard charts for five weeks and the R&B charts for seven weeks. The disc was nominated for 11 Grammys with “Exhale” (Shoop Shoop),” which was sung

by Houston, winning the Grammy for best R&B song.

Edmonds just didn’t compose the songs; he also wrote the lush score for “Waiting to Exhale.”

“Forest came to me,” recalled Edmonds. “I was familiar with the book. I didn’t know he was doing the movie. He talked to me about doing the music. I thought I would write a couple of songs and he said, ‘I don’t want you just to write the songs. I want you to score the film.’ I said I never have scored a film. He said, ‘You can do it. I’ll work with you.’”

Remembering Hines and Houston Twenty years after its release, “Waiting to Exhale” has taken on a bittersweet quality because of the untimely deaths of Houston in 2012 at the age of 48 and Hines in 2003 at the age of 57.

“I had the best leading man ever,” said Devine of Hines. “Gregory had a dozen roses waiting in my room for me on my first day of work. I must have bragged about it until my face hurt. I love Whitney so much. She was down to earth, easy to laugh and always singing. We worked together on three projects. It was devastating losing them both.”

Bassett, who directed “Whitney,” the 2015 Lifetime biopic on the movie, noted, “Whitney and Gregory were both magnificent, talented and gracious creatures.

He, utterly charming, and she, a force of joy.”

FOOD

B6

JANUARY 1 – JANUARY 7, 2016

TOJ

FROM FAMILY FEATURES

Making a New Year’s resolu­ tion? Don’t forget salt. Most Americans consume about a 1,000 milligrams of sodium over the amount recommended by nutri­ tion and health experts. New re­ search shows cooking with spices and herbs could help you ditch the salt shaker and meet sodium recommendations.

Keeping a resolution to cut salt from your diet is easy. Use simple spice swaps to create tasty, lowsodium meals. From seasoning eggs with basil instead of salt to adding spices and herbs to nosalt tomato sauce, the McCor­ mick Kitchens offer these easy tips and recipes to make low-sodium meals full of flavor: • Beat 1/8 teaspoon herb in­ stead of salt into 2 eggs before scrambling.

• Add oregano, garlic powder and red pepper to no-salt added tomato sauce for a tasty, low-sodi­ um pasta dinner.

• Try making Citrus Herbed Chicken with Asparagus, Fiesta Citrus Salmon or Tuscan Pasta.

These dishes don’t call for any salt. Instead, they swap in basil, garlic powder and oregano.

For more low-sodium tips and recipes – such as shaved vegetable salad with Italian herb vinaigrette – visit McCormick.com/recipes/ low-sodium to keep your New Year’s resolutions on track. To see the full Anderson study, which ex­ amined the effects of a behavior­ al intervention that emphasized spice and herbs, and how it im­ pacts sodium intake, visit McCor­ mickScienceInstitute.com.

CITRUS HERBED CHICKEN WITH ASPARAGUS Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: 20 minutes Serves: 4 1/4 cup flour 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese 1/2 teaspoon McCormick Garlic Powder 1/4 teaspoon McCormick Black Pepper, coarse ground 1 pound thin-sliced boneless skinless chicken breasts 1 tablespoon oil 1 1/2 cups chicken stock 1 teaspoon McCormick Basil Leaves 1 teaspoon McCormick Oregano Leaves 1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces 2 tablespoons lemon juice

In shallow dish, mix flour, Parmesan cheese, garlic powder and pepper. Reserve 2 tablespoons. Moisten chicken lightly with water. Coat evenly with remaining flour mixture.

In large nonstick skillet, heat oil on medium heat. Add 1/2 of the chicken pieces; cook 3 minutes per side, or until golden brown. Repeat with remaining chicken, adding additional oil, if necessary.

Remove chicken from skillet; keep warm.

In medium bowl, mix stock, basil, oregano and reserved flour mixture until well blended. Add to skillet along with asparagus. Bring to boil.

Reduce heat to low; simmer 3-5 minutes, or until sauce is slightly thickened, stirring frequently. Stir in lemon juice. Return chicken to skillet; cook 2 minutes, or until heated through.

FIESTA CITRUS SALMON Prep time: 5 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes Serves: 4 1/4 cup orange juice 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons McCormick Perfect Pinch Salt-Free Fiesta Citrus Seasoning, divided 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar, divided 1 pound salmon fillets

In small bowl, mix juice, oil and 1 tablespoon each seasoning and sugar. Place salmon in large re-sealable plastic bag or glass dish. Add marinade; turn to coat well.

Refrigerate 30 minutes, or longer for extra flavor.

In another small bowl, mix remain­ing seasoning and sugar. Remove salmon from marinade. Discard any remaining marinade. Rub salmon evenly with seasoning mixture.

TUSCAN PASTA Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 25 minutes Serves: 6 1 can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes, undrained 1 can (8 ounces) no-salt added tomato sauce 1 tablespoon sugar (optional) 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar, divided 2 teaspoons McCormick Garlic Powder 2 teaspoons McCormick Perfect Pinch Italian Seasoning 1/2 teaspoon McCormick Black Pepper, ground 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 pound zucchini, sliced

1 package (8 ounces) sliced mushrooms 1 small onion, chopped 6 ounces pasta, such as spaghetti or linguine In medium saucepan, mix tomatoes, tomato sauce, sugar and seasonings. Bring to boil on medium heat.

Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer 20 minutes.

In large skillet, heat oil on medium-high heat.

Add zucchini, mushrooms and onion; cook and stir 4 minutes or until vegetables are tender-crisp. Stir tomato sauce into vegetables.

Meanwhile, cook pasta as directed on package. Drain well. Place pasta in serving bowl. Add vegetable mixture; toss well.